“That wasn’t my fault. I wanted to be a good sister to Ellie, but she just made that so impossible! I had to keep her at a distance, and she never forgave me for that. J.D. could never quite forgive me, either. And that, sweetheart, is how this family ended up with you.”

Aunt Olivia raised the gun. She held it on us but didn’t fire. Instead, she walked over toward the door and picked something up.

It took me a moment to realize that it was a can of lighter fluid.

One secret to bury, I thought, hysterical laughter bubbling up inside of me. One to burn. The White Gloves couldn’t have equipped Aunt Olivia better for this insanity if they’d tried.

Campbell lunged forward, but Aunt Olivia whipped the gun toward her and shot. “Consider that your only warning, young lady,” she said as the bullet buried itself behind Campbell in the wood. “I won’t deign to miss again.”

“You were always nice to me,” Sadie-Grace said quietly. “When my mama died, you were the one who held me, not my daddy. I stayed at your house for weeks.”

“I know, sugar,” Aunt Olivia replied gently. “This isn’t what I wanted. Believe me.”

“What did you think was going to happen when you drugged Sawyer and Sadie-Grace and tossed them in a hole?” Campbell asked.

Aunt Olivia didn’t answer the question. “This wasn’t what I wanted,” she repeated.

“You wanted things to be perfect,” I said. I still wasn’t sure what had led Aunt Olivia to thinking this was the solution to her problems, but I did know there was power in telling people what they wanted to hear. “Maybe they still can be.”

“Don’t be silly.” Aunt Olivia dismissed that notion out of hand. “If we’d been the only ones on this island, this could have been contained. But now? Campbell is trouble. She always has been, and don’t even get me started on—”

“Sawyer’s right,” Victoria interjected. “This can still be contained. As the only outsider to this whole situation, allow me to assure you that literally no one would believe any of this if we tried to tell them a word of it.”

“Besides,” Campbell added, “do you really think my mama is going to let anything about what happened to the real Liv come out? Aunt Julia? My grandfather?” Campbell seemed to have recovered from her near miss with the bullet. She tossed her auburn hair over one shoulder. “My father is already in prison. There is no way on this planet that my grandfather would allow a scandal like this one to touch my only remaining parent and both of Boone’s.”